With London’s ‘Boris Bikes’ now being used for 14,000 journeys each day, the need for an easy-to-use and real-time representation of which docking stations are full has been met not by the organisers of the cycle hire scheme but by a research associate at UCL’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis working in his spare time.
A device that enables almost any bicycle to be transformed into an e-bike within minutes has reached the final of the James Dyson design awards.
Business secretary Vince Cable may feel that his decision to reduce the £230m pledged for Britain’s forthcoming ‘Plug-in electric car grant’ to £43m was unnecessary following the news this week that the Spanish government has paid a similar grant to only 16 drivers this year.
A car unveiled this week by Wessex Water that runs on methane gas generated from fermented human waste may have a performance comparable with a petrol-powered vehicle, but range may prove a problem; the converted Volkswagen Beetle relies on the waste collected from 70 households over the course of a year to travel 10,000 miles – an efficiency equivalent to six ‘movements’ per mile travelled.
Sales of 3-seat electric bicycles are soaring in Japan as school-run drivers in congested cities like Tokyo swap their cars for bikes such as the £1,000 Angelino pictured right.